Word: toyotas
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...Toyota's announcement last week that it will recall more than 3.8 million vehicles is unlikely to end the controversy over the car's sudden-acceleration problems. Following complaints about the problem - and a deadly accident in California last summer - the company acknowledged that floor mats, if not secured properly, could get stuck under the accelerator pedal, leaving a vehicle's throttle stuck open. Hence the recall, to replace the accelerator pedals and floor mats...
...critics complain that Toyota was slow to acknowledge the problem, and may still not be dealing with it adequately. "I don't think Toyota has handled it well," says Clarence Ditlow, the director of the Center of Auto Safety in Washington, D.C. Ditlow says the record shows that Toyota executives first became aware of a possible problem 10 years ago - a scenario Toyota disputes - when the company replaced the floor mats on Lexus models sold in Great Britain. "There have been six different defect petitions [filed with the National Highway Traffic and Safety Administration, or NHTSA]," says Ditlow...
...embarrassing was the colossal ineptitude of the big car companies: Ugly, low-quality cars with shameful gas mileage. Layers of redundant management that relied on amateurish financial controls. Insular thinking reinforced by decades of outsize market share. It was as if Detroit had drawn a road map for Toyota and Honda. And the Japanese drove right in, decimating the U.S. companies. In 1979, GM's U.S. employment peaked at 618,365. Today it's at 75,000 and falling fast. GM's U.S. market share, once about 50%, has fallen to about 20%. True, the quality and efficiency of American...
There are probably fewer than 1,500 plug-in electric vehicles on the road today, most in carefully controlled experimental fleets. But over the next 18 months, the number will grow exponentially as automakers like General Motors, Nissan, Ford, Volkswagen and Toyota roll out models that use electricity for all or part of the car's energy. President Obama has suggested that the U.S. could have as many as 1 million plug-in vehicles on the road by 2015. (See the 50 worst cars of all time...
...first glance appears an admirable austerity move has quickly fueled conspiracy theories and come to symbolize the government's inability to set priorities in the face of drought, food shortages and the lingering threat of political violence. Why, average Kenyans are asking, the Volkswagen Passat and not a Toyota, Honda or some other cheap and more widely available alternative? "To me, these guys are playing around with the minds of Kenyans," says Martin Kitunga, the 37-year-old senior mechanic at New World Auto in Nairobi. "Passat or Mercedes, it doesn't make that big a difference. If they really...